Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume SS - Chapter 14

Short Story:

Table Talk Adventure

HALF A DAY’S JOURNEY north from the royal capital of Laat, there was a large village by the name of Usu. It had been built to support the people who worked in the coal mines still further north and had thriving farms and forestry. But a problem was plaguing the village of Usu: goblins. These goblins had built a nest near the village, which was beginning to suffer as the goblins stole their livestock and young girls.

“If they have a good forestry industry, I feel like the woodcutters’ guild would find a way to handle it.”

No, um…the Usu Woodcutters’ Guild was dealing with a bigger threat, so they weren’t available… Right, yeah, a horde of Treants showed up in the east. That’s why Usu sent a request to the capital’s Adventurers’ Guild, asking them to please drive off the goblins. The ones who found their request were you guys, who just signed up for the Adventurers’ Guild around the same time. Cliff the warrior, Sylphiette the sword fighter, Zanoba the monk, Elinalise the thief, and Juliette the wizard. You five new adventurers form a party on the recommendation of the Adventurers’ Guild and head to the village of Usu. But you’ve only just met. Let’s introduce ourselves and what we can do. Anyone can start.

“I’ll go first then. I’m Elinalise, and I’m a thief. I’m a demon, and I’m good at lockpicking and scouting. I’m not a very strong fighter, but I can use my bow to attack from a distance… Apart from that, I’m good at cooking and gambling, and my catchphrase is ‘That’s a jinx.’”

That character sounds familiar, somehow.

“My bow will make me more useful than any monkey-faced individuals you might know, just wait.”

Will it, now. All right, next.

“Um, I’m Sylphiette, and I’m a sword fighter. I’m a human. I’m good in close combat, and I can swing my sword twice in one attack. Um, what else am I good at…oh, I love women, and I have two beautiful wives.”

Sylphie, you don’t have to base your character on a real person.

“But Paul is the only sword fighter I know…”

There are others, aren’t there? What about Luke?

“Luke isn’t a sword fighter… Plus, he isn’t that different.”

Okay, fair enough. All right, next.

“I’m Cliff the warrior. I’ll tell you now, with me there, goblins will be no trouble. I might not have said, but on the same day I signed up as an adventurer, I roasted more than ten goblins. I think I’m the natural choice for party leader.”

Trust you to be good at roleplay, Cliff.

“What’s roleplay?”

I’m saying you’re playing your character well. That being said, given everyone knows you only became an adventurer today, I think they can work out that you’re lying about killing those goblins.

“J-just so you know, I really did kill goblins on my first adventure.”

Huh? Oh, well, seeing as it’s you, Cliff, I’d expect nothing less.

“W-well, you know…”

All right, next. Let’s learn from Cliff’s example and really get into character.

“I am Zanoba Shirone. I wish to express my gratitude to you all for indulging my wish to play this game of the master’s creation.”

Zanoba, it’s great of you to thank everyone, but could you please play your monk now?

“Understood, master. Ahem. I am the monk Zanoba. I am skilled in healing and antidotes. In order for my prayers to reach my god, however, it is crucial that I be in the correct mood. As such, if you wish to benefit from my skills, you must make a commensurate offering. Take heed.”

You’re good at this too, Zanoba. I can imagine shady monks like that really existing.

“Back in Shirone, I had the opportunity to see the theater, you see… Though this now was an impression of a Millis bishop who used to frequent the Shirone palace.”

Now, now, Cliff. There’s no need to frown like that. There are always people like that in the world, even when they’ve sworn themselves to a god.

“I know that. It grates on me, is all.”

Right, lucky last. Can you do it, Julie?

“I’m Juliette…the magician. I burn…all…goblins.”

Great job, love the fighting spirit. You’re a wizard, not a ­magician, but that’s all right for now. Anyway, after you introduce yourselves, the five of you set off for the village of Usu. You walk at an easy pace for half a day, when in front of you, three goblins appear!

“What a marvelous goblin figure! D-did you make this yourself, master?!”

I thought I might as well, you know. Oh, I forgot. These are your figures. I made one for each class.

“Woooooah! Maaaaster!”

Zanoba, don’t shout. Look, I’ll give them to you when the game’s over, so quiet down for now, okay? Anyway. There are three goblins in front of you. What do you do?

“Everyone assume fighting positions!”

“Cliff, wait. My jinx says it’s best to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.” 

“But we’re here to kill goblins, aren’t we? Isn’t it better to take out these ones while we’re here?”

“Fights that do not pay are best avoided.”

“I burn goblins.”

We have three who want to go for it and two who think you should avoid the fight.

“Then it’s decided.”

“The majority isn’t always right, but if it’s what our leader wants, I’ll follow. That’s a jinx.”

“A bunch of hotheads, the lot of you…”

In that case, the battle begins. Adventurers, please do your best not to get slaughtered. The person with the highest speed stat goes first… That’s you, Sylphie. Okay, roll this dice, please.

“Oh gosh, I’m nervous…”

It’s her first battle since becoming an adventurer. Swordfighter Sylphiette, her knuckles white on the hilt of her sword, faces down the goblins and raises her blade…

***

Some small figurines of Zanoba’s were what set all this off.

“Hmm…” When I went to see him, he was staring at a collection of little figurines and grumbling, with a big scowl on his face. That was a rare sight, him looking at a figurine with a face like that. Usually, he wore a creepy smirk.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Oh, if it isn’t you, Master. In truth, I made quite the lucky find with these figurines. Behold.” He showed me a stone figurine, like a miniaturized chess piece. It was made with its center of mass in its feet, so it could stand up by itself. I guess they were similar to board game pieces in this world, only these were even smaller, and there were more types. The sizes didn’t quite match, either. Some were shaped like people, but others were shaped like monsters. Sometimes, there were a few of the same model; sometimes there weren’t. There was no regularity.

“What are these?”

“They were previously used in war room meetings. That being said, however, much about them remains enigmatic.”

War room meetings? He had to mean the thing where you had a big map that you put tokens in different colors on so that you could easily visualize the state of the battle. It was true, they seemed too non-uniform for a war room. In the first place, with figures as small as these, if you put them on a map, then people sitting on the edges at the meeting would struggle to see them.

“It is my conjecture that these were used for some different purpose, but there’s the puzzle! I have no clue whatsoever as to what that purpose may have been.”

“Then I guess they must be from a game or something?”

“Oh! Very good, Master! What makes you think that?”

“No reason. When I first saw them, I thought they looked like the pieces from a board game I played once. Plus, they’re just the right size for people gathered around a dining room table to look at.”

“That is true. But if they are for that sort of game, it is strange that they should be so lacking in uniformity!”

Was it strange? Okay, compared to the world of my past life, this world had less variety in its entertainment. When it came to game pieces, they were usually round coin-type things like you’d get in Othello, rather than pieces that are easy to tell apart, like with chess—more tokens than pieces. It wasn’t standard to use figurines that fit in the palm of your hand in games. Were these ornamental, then? But that didn’t seem right either. Ornamental figurines weren’t this bland.

“Maybe, in the past, there was a really spectacular battle, and they tried to make a lifelike record of it by reconstructing it using figurines.”

The diorama theory. “Oho,” said Zanoba, with a look that said he was intrigued. “You advance the most fascinating theories, Master. I believe there was an artist who made such things from stone.”

“Forgetting my theories for the moment, did you ask Lord Badi?”

“But of course. Only his lordship did not have any knowledge of these tokens. As they are from before the First Great Human-Demon War, he speculated that Lady Kishirika might know something of them.”

“I wonder why he doesn’t know about something from before the First Great Human-Demon War.”

“According to ancient texts, Lord Badi was born after the war. It follows that he would not know of things from before his birth, I suppose.”

I wasn’t sure how immortal demons were born… But I suppose everyone’s shaky on the details of things that happen before they’re born. Of course, I didn’t really have a sense of what that was like when it came to things that happened thousands of years ago, but it made sense that you knew about things you actually experienced in a different way to stuff you’d only heard or read about in books.

“It’s not like you to go to so much trouble over something like this,” I said.

“Au contraire! Old craft items such as these are deeply imbued with the customs and practices of the time they were created. That background is part of what makes it art!”

“Oh, right.” I actually kind of saw what he was getting at. Take Picasso’s Guernica, for example. You appreciate its value because you know the artist Picasso painted it about the war that was going on. People who don’t have that information struggle to see what makes it special. When I saw it when I was in elementary school, I just thought it looked like scribbles. That had to be what Zanoba was saying now. You had to genuinely admire his faith that there was value in these things.

“All the same, I don’t know if Kishirika will know what these are.”

“Oho? Why is that?”

“The monster pieces are all monster-shaped, but the people all have human characteristics…which makes me think this was made by a human. And I wouldn’t count on the Demon World’s Great Emperor knowing about human games, you know?”

“True. If a demon had made this, you would expect the people to be demon-shaped… Very good, Master! Insightful as ever.”

“It’s also possible she does know, of course. But either way, it’s not like we can go and ask her.”

For all I knew, in the distant past, the world was ruled by monster-like creatures, and one of them had made these figures…but if that were true, surely even Kishirika would have been more…monster-ific.

All the same…I’d seen games that used pieces like this before in my past life. Back then, I didn’t know anyone, so I couldn’t actually play them…but out of interest, I’d read through the rule books. Now that the opportunity had presented itself, maybe I could try and make one.

“Zanoba, the original purpose of these pieces was probably something else, but—”

And so it was that five rookie adventurers made their debut in my house, playing Rudeus’s homebrew TTRPG.

***

The five of them had placed the figures I’d made for them from earth magic on the map I’d drawn by hand myself, and now they were discussing their options.

“A nest will have at least thirty goblins, you know,” Elinalise said. “Considering how hard we struggled against just three, it’s too dangerous to charge in without a plan.”

“But Lise, after that last battle, we…‘leveled up,’ right?” Cliff countered. “We learned new…‘skills’? If we have a go, it should work out.”

“Hmm.” Sylphie considered. “What if we sealed off the entrance with magic?”

Zanoba turned to Julie. “Well, Julie? Could you do it?”

“Stone Cannon. Grandmaster taught me.”

“Julie, you’re a rookie adventurer here, so you can’t cast magic strong enough to collapse a cave.”

This was my first time playing a TTRPG too. Despite studying the rulebooks, that was my past life, so I’d never had the chance to play. After all, I’d had no friends. 

Because of that, I was really feeling this out as I went. But it was going well for now. The rookie adventurers had struggled a bit with the three goblins they met on the road, but they beat them in the end, and all of them had leveled up together. They picked up new skills and arrived at the village just as everyone was getting into it. Now, they were outside the cave where the goblins lived, and it was strategy time. Stuff like “Let’s light a fire at the cave mouth and smoke ’em out!” and “Let’s scatter poisoned food at the cave mouth then attack when they’re overcome by stomach cramps!” was all very well, but personally, I just wanted them to go into the cave.

“You mustn’t underestimate goblins,” Elinalise went on. “They’re classed as monsters in Millis, but they’re clever enough that some theorize they were another sort of demon in ancient times. On top of that, they can see in the dark. Caves are their territory… I know they say hunting goblins is the best way for newbies to test their strength, but eliminating a goblin nest or settlement makes this quest B-rank or higher. As soon as we knew it was a nest, we should have returned and lodged a complaint with the guild.”

Elinalise seemed not to want to go in at all. She kept on finding fault. As an experienced adventurer, she probably didn’t want to let new adventurers make an obvious mistake. My lack of research was at fault. I’d carelessly assumed that you had new adventurers fight goblins. I hadn’t known that destroying a nest was a different thing. 

Right, what to do? These goblins can’t see in the dark and they’re weaker, so I could persuade them they’ll be fine, but that feels too inelegant.

“Master Cliff, we need not listen to the whimpering of spineless cowards. Earlier, I learned the spell ‘Torchlight.’ With that to light the cave, we can exterminate the filthy goblins together.”

“Oh, ahem, I think I ought to go too,” Sylphie said gruffly. “I want to hurry up and take care of those goblins so I can get back to carousing in the company of beautiful women.”

“I burn all goblins.”

The other three were on board. Elinalise gave me a troubled look, as if to say, “You’re an A-rank adventurer, aren’t you? Say something to them.”

I decided to give her something to set her mind at ease.

“While you were all talking, Elinalise, the thief, discovers the remains of a massive amount of blood as well as bodies in the nearby bushes. From the color and the smell, Elinalise can tell that there was a battle here a few days earlier, and that many goblins are dead.”

“Rudeus,” Elinalise said slowly. “Aren’t I just assuming the situation that works out best for us?”

“The goblins are definitely dead, and as a result, there are that many fewer goblins in the cave. For certain.”

I was sending her a message: What you’re worried about won’t happen, so go into the cave already. I stared at her, praying it had gotten through. She met my eyes for a few seconds. Then her mouth opened in realization. She gave me an apologetic smile.

“Then I suppose there’s nothing for it,” she said. “But if any of ya die, I ain’t taking your bodies home! Okay? And that is a jinx.” 

She understood this was just a make-believe game, not an adventure simulation. She was always so level-headed, but perhaps, this being her first time playing, she hadn’t gotten the point. I mean, her style of play was fine, too…but I was starting as a game master, too, so if she could cut me some slack, I’d take it.

“All right. Let’s go.” With Cliff in the lead, the party headed into the cave.

“Now, I shall reveal to thee the light of God! Torchlight!”

Zanoba was fully immersed in the roleplay. I hadn’t known he was this sort of guy, but then, his gaze was fixed on the figures. The monk figure I’d made must have really looked like that corrupt priest he’d met long ago… Anyway, thanks to Zanoba, the group had a light source. With Elinalise as the lookout, they pressed on into the depths of the dark and scary cave.

“There are enemies ahead,” Elinalise said. “They seem to be asleep, but they’ll notice us if we go any further. What do we do?”

“We crush them, of course.”

“Now they shall at last behold God in all His majesty.”

“Wait, look here. These footprints on the map are bigger than goblin tracks. There might be a monster stronger than a goblin about. There was a hole in the wall along the way, right? Wouldn’t it be better to investigate that first? I mean, look, here, according to the map, there are footprints around the same size as the ones at the entrance this way. That might be the goblins.”

Whenever there was a whiff of an enemy, Cliff and Zanoba proposed rushing in without thinking, while Sylphie and Elinalise urged caution. Sylphie was exceptionally perceptive and good at assessing a situation, so she had a high success rate on drawing the correct answer from the information she had. She must have developed that ability as Ariel’s guard.

“Come to think of it, the villagers said there might be Terminator Boars living near the goblin nest.”

“Oh, you’re right…which means that might be what killed the goblins at the cave mouth…”

“When you look closely, there’s signs of a cave-in around here. Maybe, by chance, the Terminator Boar nest and the goblin nest got linked up.”

The adventurers arrived at the correct answer using what information was available to them. Actually, the same thing was written in the notebook on the ground ahead of them, so that was a shame, but oh, well. They could verify their answer, at least.

That said, this was a party of adventurers who had barely defeated a group of the same number of goblins. Could they really defeat a Terminator Boar that had torn more than a dozen goblins apart? When you thought about it like that, the side route that Sylphie had discovered was the right one.

“Right, then let’s take down this Terminator Boar while we’re at it.”

“They are pests. ’Tis the duty of roy…er, of those who serve God to keep villagers safe.”

“Yes, a Terminator Boar alone shouldn’t pose any great threat.”

“It sounds a bit dangerous, but I suppose we’ll be all right with all of us. I’m on board.”

Oh…crap. Should I have prepped a stronger enemy?

I’d thought a Terminator Boar would be too dangerous an enemy for rookie adventurers, but veterans Elinalise and Sylphie seemed to see things differently.

I want to respect my adventurers’ wishes… Let’s change things up a bit.

“Hmph. It’s asleep,” Cliff grumbled.

“Lucky us,” said Elinalise.

When the adventurers reached the Terminator Boar, the beast was snoring quietly. 

“Behold, the path continues beyond it.”

“Okay, then let’s have Julie attack before it notices. If we impede its movements with magic, we’ll have the advantage after it wakes up too.”

My wife was always full of clever ideas.

“Okay. Grammaster, give me power… Quagmire!”

That spell wasn’t on the skill list, but I had just taught her the other day that Quagmire was the product of combined water and earth magic. I’d let her have this one. It’d just confuse her if I said she couldn’t do it.

“Right, we all attack together.” With this order from Cliff, the battle began.

***

“That was tougher than expected, huh.”

Quagmire had restricted the Terminator Boar’s movement. But it had quickly gotten free and come charging at the adventurers.

“Honestly, there’s no way a Terminator Boar would be as powerful as that.”

“Might have been a mutation. I’ve heard even among the same species of monster, you sometimes get ones that are especially big and strong.”

“We ought to have better ascertained the situation in advance. Proper observation would surely have revealed something so ­obvious.” Zanoba had clever things to say now, but he’d also charged in before anyone else, no holds barred. I suppose roleplay and someone’s real thoughts are two different things.

“What should we do now?” Sylphie wondered. “Given we used up all our ‘wound salve,’ and Julie and Zanoba don’t have much mana left, should we head home for now?”

“If we do that, the goblins might move their nest,” Elinalise pointed out.

“We’d end up failing the quest…” Cliff agreed. “But that’s not worth our lives, is it…?” Perhaps the fight with the Terminator Boar had cooled him off a bit. After being so eager to go, now he was backing off. Scratch that; I should say he was back to his usual calculating self. As a note, I hadn’t thought much about what would happen if they went home in the middle of the quest, so if possible, I wanted them to go further in.

“We could go in a bit further before we decide.”

“That’s true. In adventures, after you defeat a powerful enemy, there’s always a treasure waiting!” Cliff said cheerfully.

Smirking, I led them deeper into the cave. There, they found a treasure chest. Further back from that was an elevated area, below which seven goblins and a hobgoblin were snoring. They could get in a surprise attack, but taking down all the enemies would be a tall order.

“Treasure!” Cliff tried to run toward it, but Elinalise held him back so she could deactivate the trap on the chest. Inside, they found several wound salves and a one-handed hammer. It was a magic item that affected creatures it hit with the “paralysis” effect, rendering them temporarily immobilized. “Paralysis” was particularly effective against beast-type monsters. And it worked on goblins, too, of course. 

“At last, some excellent loot,” said Zanoba. “We may fail at this quest, but by selling this, we could make up for that and then some.”

In this world, useful magic items were sold for extremely high prices. The money you’d make from clearing out a goblin nest couldn’t begin to compare.

“I don’t like to throw in the quest, but it seems like really, clearing out a goblin nest is a job for adventurers of a slightly higher level, so maybe if we report that there was a nest, it won’t be counted against us… If the goblins move their nest because of our attack, that should give the village some time before the next attack, so I feel like we should leave off here.”

Sylphie, it seemed, had thought that far ahead. When planning this scenario, I had not thought that far ahead, but if they did go home now, that was probably what I’d do. They would fail the quest, though.

“Wait a moment.” Just then, Elinalise noticed something. Perhaps it was a gut feeling born of many years of adventuring, or maybe it was that when it came to using magic items, she’d been doing it longer than the others… Okay, either way, it was because she was a veteran adventurer.

“With this, we could finish off the rest of the goblins, couldn’t we?”

“It’s not impossible, Lise, but…wait, hang on… Huh. You’re right, that’d work.”

Cliff was a clever one. He’d picked up on the tidy formulas and turn orders that the battles so far had followed. He’d seen that if Zanoba paralyzed one goblin each turn, they could just wipe out the rest. He could do the math.

“Right, let’s go,” he said. 

The rookie adventurers headed into their final battle.

***

To cut to the end, Zanoba died.

They held the advantage for the whole of the fight. Zanoba paralyzed one enemy after another with the hammer, and then Sylphie or Julie would finish them off. Once the number of enemies had dwindled, Zanoba charged valiantly at the hobgoblin—shaking off the others’ attempts to hold him back. In a show of wild courage, he got into a fistfight with the hobgoblin without so much as casting a healing spell, and so lost his precious life. As a note, paralysis didn’t affect the hobgoblin. That’s because it was a boss.

“I ask that you give my body to the waves.”

“I will not. The Millis faith doesn’t do funerals like that.”

“Master…don’t die…”

As a note, there was no permadeath in this game. They dragged the out-of-commission Zanoba back to the town, then had the ­local church do a resurrection ritual. A few minutes later, we returned to find Zanoba alive and kicking, in perfect health! The trade-off was that the resurrection cost a fifth of their payout for the quest. In other words, Zanoba lost his cut. That was the penalty for being an idiot. Still, with the extra they got for taking down the Terminator Boar, even after subtracting the penalty, they earned more than they thought, so they didn’t seem too down about it.

“Mission complete. Congratulations.” When I declared this, the five of them broke out in smiles.

“If you ask me, in the end, there was nothing to it, really,” Cliff said.

“Oh, Rudeus! If we’re adventurers, we’d definitely go out for a drink at a tavern after this.”

“Then let’s really go out to the tavern, shall we?” Zanoba proposed. “Drinks are on me!”

While the others grew more and more cheerful, Julie murmured, “Master…died…”

“Oh, that’s right. Zanoba, I really wasn’t sure how I felt about that.”

“Master Sylphiette, as the blood of royalty, there are times when I must display my valor. If Queen Ariel had been in my place, I am sure she would have done the same thing.”

“She definitely would not have, and I would have fought first before she had the chance.”

Julie’s comment set off a postmortem of the session. This went well; that was terrible; if we’d really done that there, what would have happened… A few questions came my way too, so I answered them all thoroughly. Only as I was answering, I could see where the rough spots in my scenario and the game system stood out. I was only copying what I’d read in rule books long ago, so that was to be expected, but still… Seeing how many areas I might have caught in advance did make me feel a bit frustrated.

“Master,” Zanoba said, looking at me suddenly.

“What?”

“This game was mightily entertaining. Thank you so much for putting it together.”

The game was full of rough spots, and I had a few thoughts about how it had gone…but when Zanoba said that, I was glad I had made it.